THE LEGACY NARRATIVES - VOL. II

1. Who are you? How would you describe yourself? In my process as a painter, it has been very difficult for me to recognize myself as an artist, I don't know why, but I finally feel good with this adjective. Since I was little, I have been like a reader of codes, like a little machine that prints what I see inside and outside.

2. What was your childhood like? As a child, I played a lot, to disguise the storm seasons, the worries, and the defects of parents who, in reality, only wanted to protect their offspring. Like every child of my generation, we grew up in neighborhoods full of kids amid wild games, teachers who still had the power to forcibly reprimand us; I lived in a new era of space movies competing with the vestiges of charros (Mexican cowboys) and masked wrestlers. I had a lot of fun, but sometimes I realized that I saw things differently, and I had to retreat to my corners.

3. What did you study? I graduated as a Forestry Technician in high school; then I started the Fine Arts degree, but it remained unfinished; at one point I intended to become a priest, but I was sent back home.

4. What are your hobbies? I like cinema in general, from all eras, I really enjoy Mexican cinema from the Golden Age, I love science fiction movies and special effects. I have fewer and fewer friends; when I can see them, I have a great time.

5. Why did you decide to become an artist? It could be said that it was an accident, and although I always demonstrated having qualities, in my world nobody would have aspired to be an artist. The day I reencountered that sleeping artist within me was as if I had woken up hungry to paint something that resembled a famous painting I saw in an encyclopedia when I was 20 years old. I don't know what happened to me, but since that day, I haven't been separated from the brushes again.

6. If you weren't an artist, what would you have dedicated yourself to? Imagining utopias of parallel worlds, I would have liked to be a surgical doctor, a filmmaker, a pianist, a tailor... a loving father with a couple of children.

7. Who or what inspires you? The stages of life, the lessons, the teachings, make you modify your existential and vital concept in each of them. In this present, I am starting to find myself, I think, in a better way. Increasingly, I am my own inspiration, among my defects and my qualities.

8. What style characterizes you and why this one? There are several classifications in realist painting; I categorize my style as "Actual Realism" (Contemporary Realism). In this definition, I feel comfortable and versatile, as I can paint something that is very objective, or on the contrary, prioritize something subjective that expresses concepts and abstractions, always through a realistic figuration.

9. What message do you want to give with your art? I want to transmit, with images, what I experience when observing the external world. The environments, the people, and their circumstances inspire me, they make me look inward, where a unique identity is kept that wants to narrate through its own language. I would like my messages, more than meanings, to generate emotions and sensations.

10. If you weren't you and you saw your work, what would you think? I consider myself a creator of "neutral" images, without overly distinctive or expressive features, but with a personality. Therefore, if I were not the painter of my works, I would opine that they are very well-executed paintings, which try to tell me "something," but that, rather than seeking a meaning as a purpose, you prefer to dedicate yourself to experimenting with the sensations that the images suggest to you.

11. What has been your biggest difficulty in the art industry and how did you manage to overcome it? Honestly, achieving recognition for my work, in all aspects, to achieve a better experiential balance that can further and better potentiate my creation. I try to overcome this challenge every day to achieve that harmony.

12. What has been your greatest satisfaction in the art industry? When you are a realist painter, and you manage through great effort and dedication to execute the pictorial effects you have been looking for, it is extremely gratifying. It is a sensation that only those of us who have faced it can understand. Everyone knows what they want to achieve; it is a very personal experimentation of self-advancement, which is not always perceived by others.

13. What is your goal as an artist? To mature, in the best possible way, in each of the stages I face when I paint. This will allow me to communicate my concerns and narratives better, becoming increasingly true and authentic through my paintings.

14. Why does your work contribute something new to art? Although I don't aim to contribute anything specific, I humbly believe that I can contribute to a young soul who wants to start in this profession, or dreams of it, and even more so if they are in an environment with few opportunities.

15. Why is art important in our lives? Because art gives us the capacity to create, to show our ideas and what we have been, are, and will be. Art serves to document those testimonies, through a very particular manner of expression: human creation. We need it because it is the most sophisticated and extensive language that defines us as the species we are. Without art, the record of our existence and thought would be inconclusive, empty.

16. Does an artist make a work or does a work make an artist? I remember as a child, in the Government Palace of my hometown, Durango, I was impressed by the fresco murals of Francisco Montoya de la Cruz. I never cared to know who painted that, because the work was so impactful that I wasn't interested in knowing who had done it; in this anecdote, definitively, the work made the artist. Many years later I met the great master in person in a wheelchair, very decrepit, outside a hospital, and although I expressed my sincere admiration, I don't know why at that instant I failed to relate him to all his fantastic paintings. In this society, we have wrongly learned to despise the figure of old age in all its wise structure, and to overvalue the utopia of impossible and eternal youth.

17. Is madness required to be an artist? I have never felt identified with that stereotype, however, the fact that many artists manifest having a different vision than others makes them seem different, strange. Perhaps a reflection on melancholy is more interesting than madness itself as something romantic and prominent related to an artist.

18. What advice would you give to someone who wants to be an artist? They have to fight to achieve what they want, be faithful to their purposes and ideas, have a very open mind and criteria, so that their visions as artists are more extensive and broad. You have to prepare and specialize as much as possible, find a way to do it. If you are young, take full advantage of that powerful force of joviality to build yourself. If you are somewhat older, take advantage of the fortune of recycling that the years of maturity provide.

19. What do you consider your legacy will be? Each painting or artistic work that we painters create is likely to continue existing when we are no longer here. That legacy will only be activated when it is rediscovered and valued by someone who feels identified with it in the future. Only what they decide is worthwhile will survive as our legacy.

20. How would you like to be remembered? In the end, all that remains is that those who knew and dealt with me in life have formed a good opinion about my humanity and my firm desires to be a better person despite my defects.